Benjamin Secher is already addicted to the Netflix remake of House of Cards,
starring Kevin Spacey.

House of Cards, the most remarkable new television drama of the year, is not being shown on any television channel. It may have been inspired by the 1990s BBC classic with which it shares a title, but this series belongs to the future of the medium, not the past.

The first original drama commissioned, bankrolled (at the reported cost of $100 million for two series) and aired exclusively by Netflix – an American company that streams film and video content to subscribers over the internet – House of Cards can be viewed on any screen that has a broadband connection to the web. As of today, all 13 episodes of the first series are available on the company’s website, www.netflix.com. Were you so inclined (and had £5.99 and 13 hours at your disposal) you could watch the whole lot in one sitting.

On the evidence of the magnificent opening episode, that’s a giddily tempting proposition. Directed with masterful restraint by the Oscar-winning film director David Fincher (who also serves as executive producer) and pungently written by Beau Willimon (The Ides of March), this is as seductive and polished a piece of drama as I have seen since Mad Men reached our screens.

The series begins with a bang and a whimper. On a dark street, in an affluent suburb of Washington DC, a dog and a speeding Toyota kiss in the night. The car screeches away, the mutt thuds to the pavement and political whip, Frank Underwood – Kevin Spacey’s sensational reinvention of the Francis Urquhart character played in the original series by Ian Richardson – emerges from his house to deal with the aftermath.

“There are two kinds of pain: the sort of pain that makes you strong; or useless pain – the sort of pain that’s only suffering,” he says, crouching over the wounded animal while staring straight into the viewer’s eye, a theatrical device snatched straight from Richardson. “I have no patience with useless things.” With a flex of Underwood’s arms, and the crack of canine bone, the dog is put out of his misery – and the irresistibly dark tone that will characterise the next hour of drama is firmly established.

The very thought of an Americanised House of Cards will, no doubt, trouble some British viewers. Admirers of the justly celebrated BBC series, adapted by Andrew Davies from the novels of Michael Dobbs, may find it undesirable to imagine Urquhart’s magisterial, malevolent Tory whip transplanted to Capitol Hill and recast as a dastardly Democrat with a deep southern drawl and a weakness for BBQ ribs.

However, in his meticulous portrayal, Spacey instantly puts paid to any concerns. He seems to doff his cap affectionately towards Richardson’s unforgettable performance, then swerves off to coin a fascinating, contemporary manipulator that is all his own. If Urquhart was as pale and brittle as an effigy on a tomb, Underwood has, despite his crisp shirts and tailored suits, something of the swamp about him. He puts the rat into democrat.

“In a Congress choked by pettiness and lassitude, my job is to clear the pipes and keep the sludge moving,” he says, establishing a lavatorial motif that runs throughout the episode. (His wife, played with Lady Macbeth-like froideur by Robin Wright, works for the “Clean Water Initiative”.) Theirs is a realm in which boundaries, both moral and legal, are shown repeatedly to be perilously fluid.

When, in an early scene, Underwood learns that, after 22 years in Congress, he has been passed over by the incoming president for the role of Secretary of State, he lurks toad-like by a shimmering pool before hatching his revenge. In young journalist, Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara, whose younger sister Rooney brought a similar fresh-faced precociousness to Fincher’s Facebook drama, The Social Network) he finds an unlikely ally: he will leak information that compromises his treacherous colleagues; she will write up the stories for the Washington Herald. With a flash of the heavy-handed symbolism that is this programme’s only tiresome tic, Barnes is shown registering the impact of her first front page exclusive while sat on the toilet; this is one dirty business she’s gotten herself into.

If the whole thing is steeped in moral gloom – I scoured the screen in vain for a character not driven by greed or pride, lust or vanity – it finds its perfect expression in Fincher’s gliding, crepuscular cinematography. A master of murk, the director of Se7en and Zodiac can cram more shades of grey into a single frame than EL James will fathom in a lifetime. It all adds up to something quite mesmerising and, already, addictive. Just be sure to watch it with the lights turned out.